Recycling behaviour in New York City

In order to investigate how the level of recycling differs between New York districts and how these levels are affected by socioeconomic factors, we need a few different data sources. Most importantly, we need recycling and social data but also geographical data for visualization purposes and for relating e.g. the locations of public recycling bins to the districts.

Recycling data

Our main recycling data set is provided by the Department of Sanitation in NYC and provides information about the waste recycling rates, i.e. the amount of waste recycled as a fraction of the total waste stream, in each district for 17 different months in 2018 and 2019. The recycling rates provided are for paper and for metal, glass, plastic & beverage cartons as well as the total rate, which is the combination of the two former. The data set is avaialable here.

Our second source of recycling data is a register of the geographical locations of all public recycling bins in New York City. This data set is also provided by the Department of Sanitation and is available here.

Social data

To get insight about the socio-economics of each of the 59 community districts in New York City, we make use of a data set provided by the Department of City Planning in NYC that contains detailed demographic, socio-economic and housing characteristics for the different districts. The values in the data set are provided as 5-year averages over 2015 to 2019. The dataset is quite extensive and contains roughly 600 characteristics in total. We only make use of a small subset of these, namely the median age, median household income, percentage with Bachelor’s degree and median number of household rooms in each district. The data set is available here here.

Geo data

To create map visualizations, we make use of a data set that contains shape information of the different community districts. This data set is available here and is provided by the Department of Sanitation in NYC.

We also make use of the PLUTO data set provided by the Department of City Planning, which contains coordinates for all tax lots in NYC, amongst other things. We use this data to compute the distance to the nearest public recycling bin for all tax lots (i.e. addresses) in NYC. The data set is available here here.

The map below displays the 59 community districts in New York City as well as the registered public recyling bins in New York City. The map reveals that there is a high concentration of public recycling bins in lower Manhatten and Northern Brooklyn but a lower concentration in suburban areas.

To further investigate the availability of public recycling bins in the different community districts, we visualize the distance to the nearest recycling bin for all locations in New York City. Not surprisingly, we see that the distance to the nearest public recycling bin is in general much lower for people living in Manhattan and Northern Brooklyn than it is for people living in suburban areas, such as Queens or Staten Island. We also notice that there is an area in the middle of Brooklyn with almost no recycling bins.

Next, we turn our focus to how the recycling behaviour of New Yorkers have changed over the past few years. In the map below the recycling rate, i.e. the amount of waste recycled as a fraction of the total waste stream, is shown for 17 months throughout 2018 and 2019. The recycling rates for both paper and for metal, glass, plastic & beverage cartons are visualized as well as the total recycling rate. The map reveals that the recycling rate is in general lower for paper than it is for metal, glass, plastic & beverage cartons. But we also see that all three recycling rate increases from the beginning of 2018 to the end of 2019 for most district in the city. Good job New Yorkers!

Here is a link to the map if it does not load.

Now we’ll turn to the social aspects of our data. The map below shows a variety of socio-economic factors by district as well as the recycling rates averaged over the timespan of the data. The map also shows the average distance to the nearest public recycling bin by district.

From the map, we see that there definitely is some socio-economic differences between the districts of New York City. For example, we see that the median age, median household income and percentage with a bachelor’s degree is much higher in (lower) Manhattan than in Brooklyn and the Bronxs. We also see that th

Prediction of recycling variables.

Conclusion.

Explainer notebook.